plained of his inability to like a certain description of Scotchmen-that dry, literal phase of intellect, which is so alien to all poetic or humorous liberty of language. "I was present," writes Lamb, "not long since, at a party of North Britons, where a son of Burns was expected; and happened to drop a silly expression (in my South British way) that I wished it were the father instead of the son, when four of them started up at once to inform me that 'that was impossible, because he was dead.' An impracticable wish, it seems, was more than they could conceive." This character of mind (so different, I may remark from the genial Scotch humour of Burns, or Walter Scott, or John Wilson) is not peculiar to Scotland, but every one can probably find specimens of it in the range of his own acquaintance. The most remarkable instance of obtuseness to light letters that I ever met with occurred in another region. Goeller, a German editor of Thucydides, in annotating a passage of the Greek historian, describing the violence of the Athenian factions, gives two modern illustrations: one of the Guelf and Ghibelline parties in Italy; the other—he cites Washington Irving and his book very gravely in Latin-the factions of long pipes and short pipes in New York, under the administration of Peter Stuyvesant. Imagine this erudite and ponderous German poring over Knickerbocker as seriously as over Guicciardini's History of the Italian Republics!* This instance of simplicity has a most grotesque effect in the original, printed at Leipsic in 1836. It literally reads thus: "Addo locum Washingtonis Irwingii, Hist. Novi Eboraci. lib. vii. cap. v."—"The old factions of Long Pipes and Short Pipes, strangled by the Herculean grasp of P. Stuyvesant." W. B. R. But the genial mind is accessible, at least, to some one or other of the manifold influences which are very inadequately expressed by these two general names, "Wit" and "Humour." They do but describe an inventive energy of genius, which assumes a vast variety of expression, ranging from the most acute intellectual wit, through the many forms of humour, down to frolic drollery and mere fun and the broadest buffoonery. If it be asked what claim to culture this class of faculties has, the first and simplest answer is, that they are among the talents with which man is gifted-the gift bringing along with it the necessity and the duty of culture: they are powers which will run riot and run to mischief, unless guided and disciplined. They cannot be destroyed by being disowned. It was a wretched delusion when Stoicism strove to stiffen humanity into stone: and so, in later days, there was like wrong when Puritanism looked black upon natural, innocent, healthful cheerfulness, frighting the joyous temper of a people with a frown, which I believe to this day haunts the race both in Britain and in America, to an extent which is irrational, unchristian, and of course injurious, by abandoning what is festive to the world's keeping, instead of retaining them under better and safer influences. It was Wesley, I believe, who said he had no idea of allowing the devil to monopolize all the good tunes; and it is certain that that same personage (I don't mean Wesley) will be ready enough to furnish to the needs of men holydays of his contriving, if no other provision be made for what is a natural and lawful craving of toiling humanity. There will be, too, a literature of wicked wit to fascinate and poison men, unless that of a truthful and healthful kind be cultivated. It is, I believe, not an uncommon inclination, to disown and to disparage that literature which is an agency of pleasant thoughts; and in opposing to such an opinion a few serious authorities, I hope you will not apprehend an inappropriate relapse into the grave subjects of my last lecture. A great divine, preaching at a time when Puritan rigour was beginning to make itself felt, said, "Fear not thou, that a cheerfulness and alacrity in using God's blessings-fear not thou, that a moderate delight in music, in conversation, in recreations, shall be imputed to thee for a fault, for it is conceived by the Holy Ghost, and is the offspring of a peaceful conscience :"* and another who lived to see and to suffer by the new severity, Jeremy Taylor, said, "It is certain that all that which can innocently make a man cheerful, does also make him charitable, for grief, and age, and sickness, and weariness, these are peevish and troublesome; but mirth and cheerfulness are content, and civil, and compliant, and communicative, and love to do good, and to swell up to felicity only upon the wings of charity. If a facete discourse, and an amicable, friendly mirth can refresh the spirit, and take it off from the vile temptation of peevish, despairing, uncomplying melancholy, it must needs be innocent and commendable. And we may as well be refreshed by a clean and brisk discourse, as by the air of Campanian wines; and our faces and our heads may as well be anointed and look pleasant with wit and friendly intercourse, as with the fat of the balsam-tree." A living divine, speaking not professionally, but in that agreeable work, the "Guesses at Truth," has said: What a dull, plodding, tramping, clanking would * Donne's Works, vol. ii. p. 103, the ordinary intercourse of society be, without wit, to enliven and brighten it! When two men meet, they seem to be, as it were, kept at bay through the estranging effects of absence, until some sportive sally opens their hearts to each other. Nor does any thing spread cheerfulness so rapidly over a whole party, or an assembly of people, however large. Reason expands the soul of the philosopher. Imagination glorifies the poet, and breathes a breath of spring through the young and genial: but if we take into account the numberless glances and gleams whereby wit lightens our every-day life, I hardly know what power ministers so bountifully to the innocent pleasures of mankind."* Another thoughtful essayist of our day has said, “If ever a people required to be amused, it is we sad-hearted Anglo-Saxons:" (the phrase includes us ever-working Americans.) "Heavy eaters," (rapidity must be substituted for weight for the Anglo-Saxon on this side the ocean,) "hard thinkers, often given up to a peculiar melancholy of our own, with a climate that for months together would frown away mirth if it could, many of us with very gloomy thoughts about our hereafter,-if ever there were a people who should avoid increasing their dulness by all work and no play, we are that people. "They took their pleasures sadly,' says Froissart, after their fashion.' We need not ask of what nation Froissart was speaking."+ But let me add, that the blood and temperament of race are not safeguards of contentment, for it is with the most vivacious people, Froissart's countrymen, that the perpetration of suicide is most common. Archdeacon Hare's Guesses at Truth, first series, p. 316. It is for the thoughtful minds that the agency of a cheerful literature is most needed, for remember that it is such minds that are most exposed to the morbid moods, to despondency, to discontent, to some dull depression, more fatal to the energies of the mind, than danger or earnest labour, which nerve the spirit to encounter them. These are intellectual and moral evils, which must be met and mastered by thoughtful self-discipline, and in that discipline, the service of literature may be found, if properly sought for, providing as it does in such varied form, so much of restorative influences. The good will be gained, not so much by seeking it in books especially meant for amusement, as in the culture of a capacity to relish wit and humour, as they are blended with other influences also intended to give strength and health to the mind. The recreative power of literature will of course be relative to the character and habits of the reader, and happily it is as largely varied as they are, thus suiting their various needs. It is stated by Lord Holland in his "Foreign Reminiscences," that Napoleon, when he had an hour for diversion, not unfrequently employed it in looking over a book of logarithms, which he said was at all seasons of his life a recreation to him.* It would be curious, and Lord Holland's Foreign Reminiscences, p. 174, Am. ed. I am rather sorry to see this volume quoted as authority for any thing; but as it is not matter of defamation, it may be credible. I know nothing more painful in political literature than these posthumous effusions of Lord Holland, who was known on this side the Atlantic, thanks very much to one of Mr. Macaulay's reviews, as a good-humoured, liberal nobleman, in the sunshine of whose hospitality literary men of England were wont to congregate-who was a scholar and a gentleman. These books, published since his death, as well those relating to foreign as domestic politics, show him to have been the studious recorder of |